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Sunday, May 30, 2010

Evaluation for Improvement. This manual is designed to help violence prevention organizations hire an empowerment evaluator who will assist them in building their evaluation capacity through a learn-by-doing process of evaluating their own strategies. It is for state and local leaders and staff members of organizations, coalitions, government agencies, and/or partnerships working to prevent violence. Some parts of the manual may also be useful to empowerment evaluators who work with these organizations.

Ann L. McCracken, PhD. (top left), is the Director of Evaluation at the Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati. She made the award to Dr. Wandersman.

Dr. Wandersman conducted an evaluation workshop at the Foundation conference. The workshop focused on Getting to Outcomes® (GTO), an approach which has its roots in the behavioral health treatment and prevention communities. GTO empowers organizations to plan effective programs, implement them, and evaluate the programs to see how well they worked and to continuously improve them. GTO is a form of empowerment evaluation.

The workshop focused around real-world examples and participants had the opportunity to engage in hands-on exercises that drew upon their own experiences and organizational needs and contexts.

The workshop demystified evaluation and accountability and described how programs can actually increase the probability of achieving outcomes by using the Getting To Outcomes® approach.

Getting To Outcomes® (GTO®) is an approach designed to provide the guidance needed to build capacity, enhance evaluation skills, and facilitate the achievement and documentation of outcomes. GTO is a comprehensive approach that includes all of the following crucial elements for success: needs and resource assessment, goals and desired outcomes, evidence-informed best practices, fit and cultural competence, capacity, planning, implementation and process evaluation, outcome evaluation, continuous quality improvement, and sustainability. Since publication of the Getting to Outcomes manual in 2004, the approach has been by used by dozens of community organizations involved in statewide initiatives, by county departments of a state agency, in a national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention initiative, and in many efforts to prevent drug abuse, underage drinking, teen pregnancy, and child and family mental health services. GTO is beginning to be used in emergency preparedness, services for homeless people, child welfare, substance abuse treatment, and medical treatment. To date, the Getting To Outcomes manual has been downloaded more than 60,000 times from the RAND website (available free--http://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/TR101/).

This Getting to Outcomes workshop focused on real-world examples and participants were given the opportunity to engage in hands-on exercises that draw upon their own experiences and organisational needs and contexts.
Specifically, participants learned about:

• The importance of evaluation in a results-based accountability context
• The empowerment evaluation principles that underpin the Getting to Outcomes® approach
• How to use and apply Getting to Outcomes® to plan, implement, and evaluate programs and policies

Empowerment Evaluation in the Digital Villages: Hewlett-Packard's $15 Million Race Toward Social JusticeEmpowerment Evaluation Principles in Practice
Foundations of Empowerment Evaluation
Empowerment Evaluation: Knowledge and Tools for Self-assessment and Accountability
Ethnography: Step by Step
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/EducationPh.D. Stanford University
A.M. Stanford University
A.M. Stanford University
B.A. University of Connecticut
B.S. University of Connecticut